


May come a flame

by thisprettywren



Series: Ingenium [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Abduction, Confined/Caged, Dark, Gen, Psychological Torture, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-13
Updated: 2011-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:09:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisprettywren/pseuds/thisprettywren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They thought he was dead for three years; they weren't entirely wrong about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [gelishan](gelishan.livejournal.com), [thesardine](thesardine.livejournal.com), and [misanthropyray](misanthropyray.livejournal.com) for the beta'ing.
> 
> Followup to [From a little spark](http://archiveofourown.org/works/190391). I'd said it gets worse before it gets better, and this is definitely the _worse_ (and we're not done yet), so please be warned, and if that's not for you, I suspect I'll be writing some fluff/smut to get myself through this as well.
> 
> Title credit still goes to Dante Alighieri, though I suspect he would still look askance.

John called Lestrade as he had every Friday afternoon since Sherlock’s death, more out of habit now than any real expectation.

“No word,” Lestrade said for what could well have been the hundredth time. “He’s dead or fled the country or just… gone to ground somewhere.”

Not the first one, or not yet, though Lestrade always offered it as a possibility. John was sure he’d know, somehow. Moriarty or Moran, he didn’t particularly care which, he just wanted to be there when it finally ended.

This was where Lestrade had ended the conversation for the last four months, but this time he seemed to be waiting for something. John thought he could hear him shuffling papers on his desk, opening drawers.

Finally, in a rush like he’d been working up to the words, Lestrade said: “Look, John you don’t have to—“ he stopped, cleared his throat, tried again. “It’s not on you to fix this.”

“No,” John answered, mildly.

On him, no; _in_ him, yes, and John understood the difference.

“We’ll take care of it,” Lestrade was saying, still speaking quickly. “And it’s not— you know it wasn’t your fault. You do know that.”

“Yeah.” It both was and wasn’t true, because he still remembered the dizzy rush as the detonator had slipped from his hands, and that thing had been broadcasting a signal _somewhere_ , even if they hadn’t been able to prove where.

It was just devious enough to feel inevitable, and John _knew_ with that absolute certainty born of grief.

Two long, slow breaths before he trusted himself to speak. “Thank you, Greg,” he said, as he did every week, “let me know if you find anything,” and hung up the phone.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock floated up to awareness with the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, inside his skull. He felt as though he’d been asleep for a long time. The thought barely had time to drift across the surface of his mind before he was gone again, sinking, the rise-fall-rise of his chest weighing him down like a stone, pulling him back under.

* * *

There was pain, a long, deep ache in his chest and limbs and head. Sherlock thought it must be a dream because it was fading in and out like a wave, rising and receding, inexorable and obliterating.

 _No_ , he thought, and forced his eyes open.

It took him a moment to orient himself. He was lying on his left side, a hard cement floor pressing up against the knots of his bones. When he tried to rub his eyes he found he couldn’t bring his arms around in front of his body, though even that was better than his first fear, which was that the left one was gone. _Just numb_ , he thought with relief, probing around the cuffs with the fingers of his right hand. Been lying there for a while, then.

The room was small, cold, dim, the only light coming in around the edges of a covered-over window, high on the wall. A bed, a chair, a drawn curtain in the corner, a sink against one wall, a drain in the floor. A clock hanging opposite the window. He couldn’t hear it ticking; there was no sound but the thrum of his own blood in his ears.

He moved awkwardly, stiffly, managed to prop himself up and shift until he was sitting on his heels. There was a chain running from the cuffs on his hands down toward the floor; it wasn’t long enough for him to stand. _Just as well_ , he thought, his head swimming dizzily from the effort of sitting. His pulse was racing, sweat prickling over his skin despite the chill.

Heat and sharp pain as the feeling started to come back into his left arm, blood forcing its way along shrivelled capillaries, and he realised numbly that it was going to be awful. There was nothing he could do but ride it out, try to distract himself.

His breath sounded impossibly loud, echoing around his skull ( _earplugs_ , he realised belatedly). His throat was dry; no gag, though he might have expected one, and he could have called out. He didn’t. It seemed fairly unlikely, all things considered, that there was anyone in the vicinity who had his best interests in mind. Better to bide his time and learn what he could first.

He waited, straining his senses, listening for any sound that he might be able to turn into information. His throat was dry; he could feel cramping in his muscles, his breath coming faster. There was a moment during which time seemed to stop, and he had the oddly detached thought— _I am about to start panicking_ —just before he actually _did_.

Then he was shouting, too loud in his own ears, pulling at his arms and ignoring the sharp bite of the cuffs into his wrists, the pain where his knees ground against the floor. It was the purely reactionary struggle of a trapped animal body and he hated himself for it and he _couldn’t stop_.

… until, abruptly, like a switch being turned off, he did, collapsing forward over his own thighs. He could feel the fibres of his muscles quivering with strain and fatigue, pressing up against his ribcage, and wondered impassively how long it had been since he’d eaten anything. The floor was grimy under his cheek.

Quickly, incredulously, he slipped back down into sleep.

* * *

Sherlock clawed his way back up to the surface of his consciousness again and again. Sometimes he remembered that he’d done it before, was expecting the sight that met him when he opened his eyes. More often he didn’t, wasn’t, and that made it worse.

Time was passing, slippery and insubstantial as water. He would drown in it, _was_ drowning in it.

The details were hazy: a shadowed face, sometimes more than one. Once he thought the room had been moving, the floor itself swaying rhythmically beneath him. Other times he’d come back to himself while standing, stumbling, being supported and half-dragged by his elbows. Once he’d woken to find himself soaking wet, curled on the floor of a tub.

His arm ached. His whole body did, in fact, but his arm in particular, a peculiar burning sensation, and once he’d been able to focus enough to make out a cluster of small bruises there. Track marks. The vague identification was as far as he got before there was a sharp stinging sensation in the side of his neck and he slid under again.

* * *

When Sherlock opened his eyes again, it was to darkness. Darkness and silence, and that part felt familiar, but he couldn’t _quite_ —

He could feel the hot closeness of cloth pressed against his skin, around his eyes and his cheeks, more material stuffed into his dry mouth. When he tried to bring his hands to his face, they wouldn’t move.

There was absolutely no context in his mind for any of this, where he was or why, how he’d got there. He closed his eyes again—as though it made a difference—and concentrated on what he could work out about his situation from the information available.

On his back, on a bed, arms stretched out to the corners, legs together and drawn straight. There were other points of pressure, too, tight against his skin through the barrier of his clothing at thighs and hips and neck, and some sort of stiff material encasing his hands.

Sherlock held himself very still, breathed through his nose, trying to hear past the pounding of the blood in his ears. He had the sense that he’d done this before; it was _just there_ on the edge of his memory.

His body ached to move, little jolts of energy crackling through tense muscles; he fought the impulse, trying to force himself to relax, to prevent himself from locking up further. He had the distinct sense that he’d been lying there for hours, at least, or days, and the thought pushed a bubble of panic up his throat. He forced it back down.

It was the panicked feeling that brought it back to him: waking up on the floor, a hazy, dazed feeling around the edges of the memory.

He was suddenly certain that it had happened more than once, that he’d woken up other times, other places, but they were just slips of sensation that melted away at his first attempt to examine them. He’d _lost time_. It was a bitter, disorientating feeling, and it occurred to him that he might have had this realisation before, that it might slip away from him again, over and over, forever, in the dark—

 _Stop that,_ he told himself firmly, quelling his rising urge to thrash. It wouldn’t have done any good.

Sherlock waited. He could do little else.

Time seemed to stretch out around him, expanding and folding in on itself. He kept hearing things—snippets of old songs, footsteps, distant traffic noises or rainfall. Once he heard his university chemistry lecturer call his name, loud in his ear, and he jerked in surprise, coming up hard against the straps holding him down.

Right.

He tried not to think about how thirsty he was, the ache in his empty stomach. He tried not to imagine what he must look like, lying on the bare mattress in the dimly-lit room. He counted his breaths, lost track somewhere in the thousands, started again, made it a bit farther on the second try.

John would be there soon, he decided, injecting the thought with a sense of assurance he didn’t really feel. Or, more likely: Mycroft, and he’d make a disapproving face and take him home and John would scold him and make him tea. _Cup of tea would be lovely, thanks_ , but there was something he was meant to remember about John, about the flat. He chased the thought around his mind until he was exhausted and dizzy with it, and still there was no change, and if he didn’t move soon he’d simply shake himself to pieces, but he wasn’t sure it would make a difference if he did.

Well. Perhaps better not to let his mind wander too far down that path, if he could help it.

He held his breath until his chest ached, until he could see little popping flashes of colour behind his closed eyelids, and started his count again.

_One… two….._


	3. Chapter 3

He had no way of knowing how long he’d been drifting before a hand on his cheek brought him back to himself.

His first reaction was one of relief, followed immediately by a frisson of anxiety. He froze, torn between twin impulses: to move toward the touch and to pull away.

The hand was warm and solid. A man’s hand. It definitely didn’t belong to anyone he knew and Sherlock was aware that he should care about that, but he just didn’t want it to leave, couldn’t stand to be abandoned again to that impossibility of limbo.

The hand moved slowly over his jawline, down his neck to his chest, where it came to rest over his heart. _Keep still_ , it said with light pressure there, and Sherlock jerked his chin downward in a tight little nod. _Anything_. He hadn’t realised how cold he was until he felt the trail of dissipating warmth it left in its wake.

There was a tight, hot feeling behind his eyes, impending tears, and he simply _wouldn’t_. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut behind the blindfold and willed himself to keep breathing.

Abruptly the hand moved away, and he barely had time to process that—a brief flutter of panic in his chest _—_ before it was back again, two hands on his face, coaxing his head upward and easing the gag out from between his lips. Then the pressure of fingers over his mouth— _quiet_ —and he nodded again, working his dry tongue behind his teeth. He couldn’t have spoken, in any case.

Something jammed against his lip, hard and sharp, and he flinched away instinctively. Then there was a soothing hand on his hair, and when he felt the pressure on his mouth again he had just enough presence of mind left to realise it was a straw.

It could have been drugged, or poisoned. He didn’t care. He drank gratefully, the liquid sweet against his tongue, soothing his dry throat. When it was gone he pressed his lips together immediately, trying to show that he’d be quiet, that it wasn’t necessary to gag him again.

The fingers carded through his hair, and the kindness was _shattering_. He felt the tears he’d been suppressing slip from the corners of his eyes, hot against the skin of his face, and he turned his head until his nose found the inside of the man’s wrist and just rested against the pulse point there, breathing.

 _Please don’t leave me again_ , he thought, and it wasn’t until the hand pulled abruptly away that he realised he’d said it aloud. Just breathed it, really, against the inside of the man’s arm, but it was enough; there was the sharp sting of a slap against his cheek. He gasped, stunned, recognising too late that the gag was being pressed back into his open mouth, unable to pull away. The fabric was still damp and clammy from his own saliva and he gagged when it brushed against the back of his tongue.

 _I’ll choke_ , he thought as his throat spasmed. He could feel the sugary drink sitting in his stomach, heavy and threatening. If he brought it up now it would have nowhere to go. He’d choke and aspirate and drown in it, and _Christ_ , he didn’t want to die like this. He clenched his jaw around the cloth and forced the muscles of his throat to relax and finally, _finally_ , the danger passed, but it was already too late. He’d been left alone again.

* * *

Sherlock didn’t know how long he continued to lie there, unanchored, trapped inside his own mind.

The only change was the increasing discomfort in his muscles and, soon, in his bladder. It took him a while to reconcile himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to be let up to relieve it; even so, he fought the urge as long as he could. A surge of anger swept through him when he was forced, finally, to relieve himself in the bed, an anger that was replaced with shame through the long hours during which he felt the damp fabric of his trousers cooling against his thighs.

Once he began to shiver he found he couldn’t stop.

Sherlock knew all about what this sort of thing did to a mind. In his more lucid moments he could approach his situation with something almost like detachment. He turned it over in his thoughts, trying to calculate how long he’d been there already, how much longer he’d be able to maintain coherent thought, how long before he could no longer recognise what was happening to him.

 _How dare they_ , he thought at first, but it was soon drowned out by self-admonishment for having been so foolish. If he’d only followed instructions, remained silent—

Knowing how unlikely it was to have made a difference didn’t really matter.

He floated, might have slept. The difference between waking and sleeping was almost imperceptible, just another element of maddening uncertainty.

This time, when the touch came, he pulled away. He’d been dreaming or hallucinating, he wasn’t sure which: bright colours dancing in front of his eyes, the room crashing down around him, John’s voice.

The reality of the situation hit him with almost physical force and before he could stop himself he was pulling and thrashing in the bed, fighting the restraints, ignoring the way the straps were biting and sawing into his skin. Once started he couldn’t stop; he had to get up, to move, he simply _couldn’t_ —

The hands had withdrawn when he began to struggle. As soon as he fell into an exhausted stillness, though, they were back, rubbing his hair, his cheek.

 _Thank you_ , he thought, _thank you_ , and didn’t need to be told not to speak when the gag was removed. This time he accepted the straw without hesitation and drank slowly, carefully, trying to prolong the process as long as possible. When he’d sucked down the last of the sugary drink he braced for the return of the gag, and if he was shaking when the hands pulled away it was _absolutely not_ from fear, just exhaustion.

To his great surprise he next felt the touch down at his ankles, working loose the straps holding him to the bed. His heart leaped with relief that was quickly tainted with a feeling of panicked desperation. He couldn’t stand to lie there alone and trapped for one more minute, and he was terrified lest the man change his mind. Sherlock tried to brace himself against the possibility— _might all be a joke, he could start replacing the straps rather than removing them—_ and hesitated, biting down on his lip to keep from giving voice to any of the jumbled words ricocheting around his brain.

 _If he’d only put the gag back_ , Sherlock thought as he felt the loosening of the restraints on his left arm, then he’d be safe, he wouldn’t slip, wouldn’t beg.

He slid the tip of his tongue between his own teeth and clamped down.

The stiff material encasing his hands stayed in place, as did the blindfold and earplugs, but soon all the other restraints had been removed and the man was coaxing him to sit up, easing him through the trembling protests of his muscles. Somehow Sherlock ended more or less upright, with his forehead leaning against the man’s shoulder.

The man had one hand in Sherlock’s hair and the other against his upper back, supporting him. When Sherlock felt him begin to rub small circles between his shoulder blades, his hand there large and warm and steady, it was _too much_ , an overload of relief. Suddenly none of the rest of it mattered—that he needed to keep his guard up, that nothing substantial had changed, that this man was most assuredly _not_ on Sherlock’s side—just this small kindness after so long, and it wasn’t until he felt the dampness seeping through the cloth of the blindfold that Sherlock understood that he was crying.

It didn’t last long; he was already wrung dry, mentally and physically. There seemed to be no hurry, and when Sherlock was done the man eased him back down onto the mattress, smoothing his hair back from his forehead and wiping at the exposed parts of his cheeks.

The mattress shifted when the man stood, and Sherlock felt an immediate surge of trembling fear that he was about to be strapped down again. It might have been minutes later or hours when he managed to convince himself that, no, the man had left, he was alone.

He turned on his side, curled into a ball, and slept.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock woke with a start to the feeling of a hand in his hair, fingers insinuating themselves into his curls, holding him down. There was a disorientating feeling of claustrophobic pressure in his ear and then one of the earplugs popped free. A sudden assault of noise, though he knew none of it was objectively loud: the thrum of electricity in the walls, a distant dripping, the ticking of a clock. He barely had time to process any of it before a sharp tug on his hair forced him to turn his head, stiff neck protesting, and the other earplug was removed.

“Time to wake up now!” The voice in his ear was close, too loud, familiar, and it took him only the space of a few seconds to place the sing-song inflection.

 _Moriarty_. He didn’t say the name out loud only because he couldn’t seem to get enough breath; the man was still talking, and after so long trapped in the silent space of his own mind it was just _too much_ all at once, an overwhelming wall of sound.

“— would have worked it out already, the great Sherlock Holmes. Not everyone can live up to expectation, I suppose. I mean, just _look_ at you, you’re disgusting.”

Sherlock was suddenly conscious of his own state; what he must have looked like, how he must smell. An unwelcome flush of shame pressed in on his mind. Irritably, he tried to brush it away. He couldn’t _think_ past the noise in his head.

Hearing Jim’s voice had brought it back, a half-remembered jumble of thoughts: the flat, the phone, the texts. John. `You’re going to want to watch this.` The pain of burns and cracked bones.

Sherlock flexed his arm experimentally but it didn’t hurt, not as it should; how long had it been, since—?

Moriarty’s laugh was a high, thready noise. “Oh, you _are_ going to be fun. I might be able to make something of you yet.”

There was an abrupt tug at the back of his head and the blindfold slipped free. He had to squeeze his eyes closed to the sudden onslaught of light against pupils too-long accustomed to the dark. He groaned, admonishing himself for it even as he heard the sound leave his throat. A show of weakness, and if he could just have a moment to gather himself he’d be able to come up with something appropriately scathing to say, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t—

He was being pulled to his feet then, muscles like jelly, knees grating against themselves at the effort of supporting his weight, daggers of pain in his hips. Jim laughed again and Sherlock bit his lip, forced his legs to obey him, clenched his still-covered hands at his sides, pulling his elbows in tight against his ribcage.

“We’ll get you cleaned up now,” Jim was saying, the mockery in his tone making Sherlock’s stomach clench. “Here, my dear, let me help you with that.”

It took Sherlock a moment to process the fact that Jim was _stripping_ him, pulling his soiled trousers and pants past his hips and down his legs. Sherlock stood stiffly and didn’t step out of them, some small part of his mind urging him out of automatic acquiescence.

“You know, if you wanted—” he began, trying to ignore the hoarse rasp of his own voice.

Jim simply laughed and pushed him backward with one quick shove against his chest. Still unable to open his eyes against the glare of the overhead lights, Sherlock didn’t see it coming, couldn’t brace himself. He landed heavily on the hard floor, the bruising force of it temporarily pushing the air from his lungs, and he curled onto his side as Jim yanked the material down over his bare feet.

“Oh, Sherlock. You never did learn to see the subtleties. There now, my dear, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Sherlock was being pulled back to his feet, stumbling forward a few steps. He could still feel his chest heaving in response to the spasming of his diaphragm, hear his own ragged attempts to pull air into his lungs, and he told himself he’d have resisted if he could see, if he could _breathe_ , if he had his hands, but as it was he let himself be half-dragged into the darkness before him.

There was a sudden cold sting of water on his skin and he gasped again, the frigid water stealing his breath just as he was beginning to feel the welcome rush of oxygen in his bloodstream once again. It was disorientating, the water seeming to come from all sides at once, and he finally just sank to the floor in an effort to preempt the fall he knew was coming. He knelt on the floor, pressing his balled fists into his thighs and trying to duck his face out of the spray. He didn’t want to respond like this, didn’t want _any_ of this, but he couldn’t—

— couldn’t shift his body, even after the the water finally stopped, couldn’t peel his shins up off the hard floor or uncurl his spine, raise his head. Jim was talking, a twist of laughter in his voice, but the sound reached him as though from a great distance. When he eventually heard the slam of a door and clicks of deadbolts sliding home, he still couldn’t bring himself to move, just sat and shivered and waited for something to change.

Nothing did, for a long time. He got colder, and drier. His knees began to ache, kept on aching.

Sherlock would have liked very much to open his eyes, but the light beyond his lashes was still too searingly bright. He tried to shade them with his hands, but they were still encased in those infuriating coverings, the fabric grown waterlogged and heavy, and his shaking muscles wouldn’t support his arms long enough to make much progress. _Pathetic_ , he berated himself, _truly pathetic, snivelling here on the floor like this_ , but he couldn’t seem to force his sluggish form to do anything else.

Time passed. Sherlock didn’t think it had been long before he heard the sounds of the door opening, the approach of footsteps. He stiffened, but the hands that grabbed his shoulders and helped him to his feet were familiar. Not Jim’s; the other one, then. Sherlock let himself be turned and led back toward the mattress because he didn’t know what else to do, couldn’t bring himself to stumble blindly through an unfamiliar space just for the sake of his pride, or whatever scraps of it might be left to him.

“Come on then, _leannán,_ ” an unfamiliar voice was saying in his ear. “Sit down, we’ll get you sorted.”

And he did, God help him; he sat passively and let the man rub warmth back into his limbs. He brushed the sopping hair away from Sherlock’s forehead and used his fingers to filter the light over his eyes, and eventually he did manage to get them open. He greeted the light like a lost friend, vaguely dazzled by it (and not even that bright anymore, Sherlock realising with a surge of gratitude that he must have turned them down), and it was through this dim hazy glow that he first saw the other man’s face.

He recognised him immediately. It was obvious, really, he should have known it the whole time, so that when the other man finally said, “I’m Sebastian,” voice low and gentle as though it might damage, it wasn’t even a surprise. The memory bubbled up to the surface of his brain—John, Lestrade, Baker Street, _Sebastian Moran_ —and Sherlock ought to hurt him, he knew. Ought to _want to_ , certainly, but the knowledge wasn’t enough for the impulse to override the blanketing feeling of relief stealing over him. Not now, when he was finally almost warm after so long, when Sebastian was being so shatteringly careful and kind with his aching limbs.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and didn’t speak.

Sebastian’s lips were thin, set in a face that was worn and seemed tired, and the faint smile that played across them looked out of place. “Yeah. I thought you’d know me.” Sebastian leaned back, took his hands away from where they were rubbing Sherlock’s upper arms, and Sherlock had to forcibly stop himself from leaning forward in an attempt to follow them with his body. “It’s all right, _leannán_. I’ll give you some time to think about it, yeah?”

 _No_. The word surged violently through Sherlock’s thoughts, a wave of anxiety he knew to be irrational, and he pinched his lips together to keep the sound behind his teeth.

“Can’t do anything about those, I’m afraid,” Sebastian said, indicating the small leather pouches still encasing Sherlock’s hands, “but you can, ah—“ He seemed almost disappointed as he stood and moved away, waving a hand vaguely around the dim space. “Well,” he said finally, and slipped through a door in the far wall.

The sound of the locks sliding home seemed to echo around the space long after he’d gone, and Sherlock was left to acquaint himself with the room. He’d seen it before, he could remember that now. It was just the same as then: bed, chair, sink, drain, curtain, window, clock, all dull grey and white. A large part of the cement floor was wet; there were odd stains on the floor near the drain, blood and other things that didn’t bear thinking about. Sherlock wondered idly whether they were his, whether it was better or worse if they weren’t.

He’d investigate the curtained area, he decided, when he had more energy. For all it seemed that he’d been sleeping for an eternity—

( _How long already?_ Long enough for his injuries to have healed, at least; long enough for his flesh to have grown closer around the sharp peaks of his bones.)

—he was listless, drained of energy. He lay on his side on the bed and watched the sunlight fade to dusk and eventually to darkness around the edges of the boarded-over window.

It was a very long night.


	5. Chapter 5

Days.

He’d lain there for days, drifting listlessly, nearly catatonic with boredom. Sometimes, for variety, he sat in the room’s single chair, but it was uncomfortable and uneven and he tired of it almost immediately. He watched the light come and go in the space around the window (the room itself dim), watched the hands move around the face of the clock, drifted in and out of a perpetual twilight doze. Moran came at irregular intervals with food, water. Once he’d offered cigarettes; Sherlock’s automatic refusal came of an impulse he no longer understood and instantly regretted.

Sometimes Sebastian would stay to chat, just random bits of nonsense, and if Sherlock clung to the visits and the words he did his best not to show it. Sebastian didn’t offer any news about what might have been going on outside that room, and Sherlock himself was mostly silent, not trusting what he might say.

Time, between these visits, was an empty space. Inside that space, Sherlock’s world was very quiet indeed.

He’d explored, of course, pacing around the small room. Not much to find, the same dull colours everywhere. He’d have liked the use of his hands back, and was reluctant (not _afraid_ , no, certainly not) to ask. Suspected asking would be unwelcome; suspected it would have done little good, in any case.

His brain felt sluggish and unresponsive, and if he told himself it was the smart thing to do to act compliant while in that state… well. He’d be forgiven for it, he thought; he hoped so, at least, told himself he would ( _by whom?_ as though it mattered), ignored the doubts that were making themselves known less and less insistently.

It wasn’t that he’d forgotten about Jim, not precisely, but he’d been lulled into the deceptive rhythm of his new limbo existence, and had simply set the thought of him aside, to come back to later.

He said _later_ as though time still had any meaning.

* * *

“I’m starting to think all you do is sleep,” he heard, and when Sherlock opened his eyes Jim was standing over him, eyes round and dark and hungry against his pale skin. The lights were on full-blast overhead, and Sherlock wondered vaguely how they hadn’t woken him.

He pushed himself to a seated position, swung his feet over the edge of the bed, didn’t even bother trying to cover himself. Some humiliations were worse than others, and that one had long since ceased to have any real meaning for him.

He tried to summon his most withering glare, but even he could tell it didn’t look right on his face.

“Oh, don’t sulk, Sherlock. I just want to talk to you. I even brought you a present.” Jim smirked, his mouth twisting joylessly up at the corner. “I have some information you might want, about that doctor friend of yours.”

Sherlock felt himself grow very still.

_John._

“He’s all right.” It wasn’t a question, he realised when he heard himself say it (and he hadn’t meant to, had meant to stay silent); it was a prayer, or as close to it as he came.

“He’s fine. Well, as fine as can be expected. He _has_ recently lost someone rather dear to him. Well, perhaps not all that recently.” JIm’s eyes were locked on Sherlock’s face, watching for his reaction; Sherlock did his best to return the gaze coolly, trying to ignore the fact that he was forced to do so through hair hanging knotted and overlong in front of his own eyes. “Oh, my dear, didn’t you know?”

Jim reached into his pocket and fished out a folded piece of paper, opening it to reveal a single photograph which he held out for Sherlock to see. Sherlock kept his eyes on Moriarty’s face for a long moment before letting it slide down to the photograph.

It wasn’t a particularly good photograph, slightly overexposed, of a headstone. The engraving had Sherlock’s name on it along with a date of birth and a date of death. There was grass growing right up to the edge of the stone, the shadow of moss creeping up one side.

Sherlock blinked and kept his face very carefully still.

“Oh, my dear. Were you imagining they were all out there searching for you? How sweet. Sweet and quite incorrect, I’m afraid. You died in that blast at the hospital. Oh, and do you know the absolutely best part of that?”

Jim paused, waiting, his eyes fixed on Sherlock’s face expectantly. He wasn’t going to go on until Sherlock acknowledged it; Sherlock, his mind still reeling, finally gave in. “I do not,” he said flatly.

“The best part,” Jim said with a sick grin, “is that John set off the bomb himself.”

Sherlock stared at him.

“Well,” Jim went on with a shrug, “he thinks he did, anyway. Which is really just as good as the real thing. What do you think he would do with that information, hmm? How do you think he’s handling that?”

There was nothing he could have said in response to that.

“Don’t worry. I’ve been keeping tabs on him for you. He was quite cross with you, you know. For choosing me. Because that _is_ what you did, Sherlock. Chose me over him. Chose yourself. We’re the same, you and I; we always look out for ourselves.”

Jim winked at him, and Sherlock swallowed against the bile rising in his throat.

“I don’t believe you,” Sherlock managed, finally, ignoring the rough edges of his own voice.

Jim’s laugh was a hectic, high-pitched sound. “Believe what you like. Maybe I’ll let you call him, one of these days, so you can hear for yourself just how your doctor is faring without you. Well. Not so much _yours_ anymore, now, is he. How long did you even know him, hmm? A few months?” Jim looked exaggeratedly around the room and Sherlock felt a sudden surge of embarrassment at his surroundings, the dirt, his own state.

The fact that it made no sense didn’t make it any less true.

“I’ll kill you.” The words slipped past his teeth before he could stop them, and he didn’t know which was more painful: the sharp blow that knocked him off the low mattress, or the fact that Jim had delivered it while _laughing_.

“Oh, Sherlock. No you won’t. You’re just saying that because you think you have nothing left to lose.” He crouched down over Sherlock where he lay on the cement floor. Jim’s voice grew abruptly low and serious. “You have no idea how much I can still take from you.”

He reached out a hand and placed a thumb _just so_ along the crease below Sherlock’s hip, screwing down on a nerve. Through the yellow-grey haze of pain that followed, Sherlock could just make out the lilting voice. “Now. I know all this sameness _does_ tend to dull the mind a bit, so I’ll make things easier for you. You’d known him for a few months. A few months, and you thought him yours.” An increase of pressure at his hip and what bit of coherent thought Sherlock had left was devoted to hoping he hadn’t just made that noise out loud. “How long do you think you’ve been here? How long have I had you, Sherlock?”

Sherlock had to close his eyes and turn his head away before he could answer, before he could admit the truth he’d suspected but had been holding at arm’s length from himself.

“ _Longer._ ”


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock didn’t remember the room being quite so… fluid. Surely the ceiling hadn’t been made of water all this time; surely there hadn’t always been those shadows dancing just at the edges of his vision.

When he tried to focus on the shadows his eyes seemed to bounce right off them, darting around the room in frenetic movements. He couldn’t seem to force his gaze to linger anywhere, couldn’t find anything to which to anchor it.

The ceiling was dripping on him. Sherlock couldn’t decide if it was a good or a bad thing; probably bad, since what it was dripping appeared to be—examine his fingertips; a tentative lick; yes, definitely _was_ —blood. Relative viscosity (arterial vs. venous); should have recognised it immediately.

Ah. His own blood, then, under his nails, coating his right palm, and he could remember scratching at the inside of his left elbow; could remember _starting_ to scratch, anyway. Apparently he hadn’t stopped. Interesting.

He knew he was muttering to himself, unable to keep his tongue from moving in his mouth, but he’d been doing that for days already, just for the noise, even before Jim had dosed him with whatever stimulant that had been.

He’d been awake for— his eyes slid to the clock, ricocheted off, away, back again. Even with it he couldn’t judge the time, not precisely; he’d lost track. Stupid. Days, though. Three or four, maybe five.

(He hoped it hadn’t been five. Five brought the tipping point that much nearer. He wished the tipping point were nearer; it would be easier, perhaps, after. He hoped it had been five. Better, worse: meaningless distinctions, semantic trickery, _irrelevant_.)

Jim had forced the first pill down his throat, dark eyes alight, his face twisted into a smile that somehow didn’t seem to reach his lips ( _not how smiles work,_ Sherlock thought, but couldn’t hold his thoughts there long enough to work out what he meant). Then Jim’s departure and the slow ramping up of his heart rate, incipient restlessness, a need to move. He’d paced and paced around the room until Jim came back and offered a second pill in exchange for taking the mitts off his hands (finally), and of course he’d agreed, had just opened his mouth and let him set the tab on his tongue; Sherlock knew it was pathetic but _Christ_ , his bloody hands, he couldn’t have refused, it was a blessing, a miracle—

He’d have strangled Jim right then if he’d had any feeling in his fingers, if the muscles of his hands hadn’t cramped convulsively when he tried to uncurl them, if the pounding vice of returning circulation hadn’t left him gasping; after that the ceiling had gone rather disconcertingly liquid and he’d lost that train of thought altogether.

Now he had his fingers back and the first thing he’d done was scratch a hole through his skin.

(In truth, the first thing he’d done, in the interval after the shuddering pulse of returning circulation had ebbed from his hands, while the pill was still sitting heavy and undigested in his stomach, had been to take a piss; unspeakable relief to be able to keep himself clean, not to have to rely on Sebastian for assistance. Some humiliations really were worse than others, and this one— well. Having his hands was an improvement.)

Right. The scratching had been the second thing. It was important to be precise. He could have laughed.

The clock was moving too quickly, out of sync with the light outside the boarded-up window. Sunrise, sunset, the movement of a second hand: constants. Must be far gone, then, and the fact that he recognised it for a hallucination (thought it was, at least, like the others, because the others _must_ be, surely) did nothing to settle his careening thoughts.

Sherlock could feel his individual organs working, pulsing and struggling inside his body, his muscles seized by unpredictable cramps. The sensations were, at least, diverting. He needed to sleep but he couldn’t sit still and the fact that he recognised that as the _entire point_ , that he knew precisely what Jim was attempting to achieve—

Well. It was effective for a reason, and knowing that didn’t make it any less so. Perhaps if he could just focus— but his thoughts zipped through his mind like electric sparks, too fast to catch. He could smell the burned synapses. Useless.

The skin on his hands was all wrong, under the blood, and he wanted to wash them, but when he twisted the taps on the sink no water came out of the faucet. He smacked the basin in frustration and the bright flash of pain in his hand was so bloody marvellous that he kept at it for a bit, striking out at the wall and, when he found himself there, the floor, not caring that he’d burst through the skin over his knuckles. It was just blood, more blood, _his_ , and the ceiling could just keep its water to itself, thanks very much.

He was dreadfully thirsty, and the taps, damn them— but at least he wasn’t hungry, which was something.

Sherlock had never been prone to claustrophobia, particularly, but when the floor began to crawl with unidentified shadows that slithered away from his gaze he was forced to retreat to the low bed and, really, it wasn’t enough, he needed to be moving and there was nowhere to _go_ , the lights overhead far too bright and it just wasn’t—

He woke again to the sharp burn of a needle sliding into his arm, Jim’s face looming over his own. “Very naughty,” he was saying through a tight smile, and Sherlock actually lashed out at him. Jim jumped back, laughing, keeping a firm grip on the empty syringe.

He could only have been asleep for a few moments but his body needed it, Sherlock just couldn’t—

“— see you can’t be trusted,” Jim was saying, “but I’m sure I can find a way to give you some more assistance,” and by the time Sherlock had puzzled out the words he’d already been forced down into the single chair, hands trapped behind him ( _no no no, not again_ ), ankles pulled back and secured.

Sebastian was whispering in his ear, “I’m sorry, _leannán,_ I’m so sorry,” and Sherlock turned his head to try to see him but he just put his hand comfortingly on Sherlock’s hair for a moment and slipped away.

— and Sherlock was alone with Jim, Jim’s face growing to fill his field of vision, those dark, heavy-lidded eyes, and he could already feeling himself vibrating with the effects of whatever it was he’d just been given, his blood heated and quivering just under the surface of his skin.

Jim was holding something in his hand, a small metal object like a fork, but with tines on both ends. Sherlock knew what it was immediately, of course. It was absurd. Bloody hell.

“No sleep just yet, Sherlock. Not like you to give in; you must be slipping. But, because I’m such a very kind person, I’m going to _help you_.”

Sherlock heard himself say, “Don’t,” as though it would make a difference, and Jim laughed, balancing the object lightly on the tips of his pale fingers. There was dirt under his nails.

“I thought you’d recognise this. The Inquisition was such a remarkable period for innovators, you know, and I’m a bit of a collector. This little device is worth quite a bit, actually, but I rather think you’re worth it.” Jim gave a nasty grin and Sherlock was suddenly glad that he couldn’t force his eyes to fix on the man’s face for more than a second or two. “ _Abiuro_. Is there anything you’d like to recant, my dear?”

Jim didn’t give him a chance to respond, which was just as well, as Sherlock was busy biting down on his tongue ( _careful_ , his teeth beginning to chatter a bit).

“No, I suppose not. Still.” He reached out and twisted his fingers in Sherlock’s hair, forcing his head back while he fixed the device along the front of his long throat, the lower set of prongs propped in the space just below the join of his collarbones. When he released Sherlock’s hair the underside of his chin just brushed the sharp tips of the top set.

Sherlock gave a long swallow and had to remind himself to breathe.

“Heretic’s fork, they’re called,” Jim said, stepping back with a smile. “I’ve never been one for the religious implications, but still, one has to admire the ingenuity at work. I’ve always been a fan of the classics. It looks good on you, my dear.”

He reached out a hand to ruffle Sherlock’s hair affectionately; when Sherlock tried to pull his head away Jim gave a vicious shove downward, driving the two sets of spikes into the skin of his chest and chin. Sherlock gasped and bit back a shout that only would have made it all worse.

“There you go, my dear. We can have our talk later, when you’re ready.” A nasty smile, all teeth, stretched the corners of his mouth. “I don’t mind waiting if you don’t.”

And then he was gone and Sherlock was left with the stimulant vibrating in his veins, tearing his thoughts to pieces until they were broken and churning, his mind screaming with them.

He’d thought nothing could be worse than being trapped with all that useless adrenaline coursing through him, but that opinion changed once the drug started to wear off and he came to understand just how effective those four little spiky bits of metal could be. The chair back was too low to lean his head against, and every time sleep started to drag him under—the pull only made stronger by the come-down from the drug—and his head tipped forward the points would dig savagely into his flesh. It wasn’t long before they’d worn four raw patches in his skin—deeper, even; through it entirely—that seeped gently with his blood.

He thought: This is going to destroy my brain _._

Then: It might actually kill me.

Sherlock found he rather preferred the second option.

Jim’s face, distorted with mockery, floated up out of the space before his bleary eyes, curious and demanding. “Admit it,” he commanded, “that you chose me,” and Sherlock had assented because agreeing was better than begging, because he could remember the choice, because he believed him. He could see the two of them in his mind’s eye: himself, naked and filthy, bound; Jim, impeccably composed, only the motions of his head belying the disquiet in his mind. They belonged together; he’d known it all along.

But it hadn’t been enough, and when Jim was gone Sherlock let his eyes fall closed in defeat.

The clock told him it was two days later (unless he’d missed something; always a possibility, always something) when Sebastian finally slipped through the door of the room. Sherlock knew he was pale and shaking, that his skin was clammy, but wasn’t aware of much else beyond the general ache in his body, the overwhelming urge to sleep. Sebastian wasn’t the first person he’d seen walk through that door (a rather impressive array of hallucinations, actually, but even knowing it for what it was his mother’s face had almost set him sobbing, and if Mycroft knew about that….), but he was the first who’d laid a calming hand on his head, who’d planted a chaste kiss on his forehead and pulled the hated thing away from his throat, sliced through the cable ties, helped him over to the bed and wrapped a blanket around him.

“I’m so sorry, so sorry, I’m here now, it’s okay,” Sebastian was murmuring in his ear. Sherlock just let the sounds wash over him, let himself be enfolded in the other man’s arms. He was tired, so tired, and as the relieving darkness of sleep started to slip down over his eyes he thought that, if this was another hallucination, it was a good one.

* * *

When he woke, sometime later, he was alone. There were long lines of raw skin on his chest, the raised blisters of burns, and if he couldn’t remember how they’d got there (telling himself firmly that he couldn’t), he was glad of it.

* * *

It was a test. A test he’d set for himself, and Sherlock was failing. Failure felt like acid (sharp) in his stomach, like fog (dull) in his brain, brittle and dirty in his hands.

The first time he’d taken the clock apart it took ages, working the tiny screws with his fingers. (Taking time to investigate time; a currency of which he had a bit too much, these days, and nothing worth the exchange.) He’d started at the face of it for uncountable hours ( _wrong_ —precisely countable, it was counting them itself), the doubt slipping in gradually round the edges of his thoughts.

So he pulled the clock down from the wall and took it apart, turning over the gears in his fingers, his thoughts and skin catching against the fine points of their teeth. No evidence, nothing, and he’d put it back together again with a sense of disappointment. It wasn’t until after he’d done so that he realised he had no way to set it to the proper time.

He’d laughed at that. Might even have done so out loud. It both mattered and it didn’t, and he didn’t know—

Well. It was all relative, anyway; just a way of judging the gaps, how deep they were, how far down he’d already fallen.

After that, it was a way to measure his own state. He’d take the clock apart as a test; as long as he could get it back together again, he told himself, he was fine. ( _Fine, fine_ , it echoed in his head; something he ought to remember about that, but it was gone, fluid and elusive as anything he tried to recall specifically in those days.) He did it over and over, until he could have done it blind.

A test, and he was failing. He’d taken it apart, a comfortable familiarity to all the required movements, and now— now, there was something off. Something missing. _Something missing, indeed_ , and he could have laughed at that, too, if he hadn’t been so sure it would send the acid crawling up his throat. He clenched his teeth instead; swallowed it down.

He couldn’t make the pieces fit again, nothing clicking together as it should, not in his brain, not here, not —

It wasn’t until he found himself staring at the sharp sherd of plastic embedded in the flesh of his palm that he realised he’d smashed it. The pain was a blessing, and he didn’t pull it out for a long time.

* * *

Sherlock had a secret.

Sebastian had been disappointed in him about the clock; even once he’d been forgiven (the burns allowed to heal, fresh clean tissue), it took Sherlock a very long time to work up to making his secret known. It was a risk, but Sebastian understood, Sherlock knew he did. He’d said as much.

(Well, that wasn’t precisely true. What Sebastian had uttered was in fact a single syllable, just an exhaled sound of agreement against the top of Sherlock’s head, following Sherlock’s shaky admission that he really just wanted to go outside. “Not even to… go,” he’d added hastily, “Just— just to see. To look. For a bit.” _For a change_ , he meant, along with: _please_ , and couldn’t say the last part. But Sebastian agreed and Sherlock’s heart had leapt with that sound, clung to it even now.)

Sebastian understood. He’d be forgiven, he knew, and it was worth the risk that the forgiveness would be a while in coming, that it might hurt. Sebastian always forgave him, in the end. After.

Sherlock’s secret was small, and round, and smooth. He’d found it wedged between the base of the sink and the cement floor: a small washer, left over from the smashed clock. The only piece left, the only one they’d missed.

He would have to be very careful, balancing on the single chair and stretching up to the window high in the wall; not much leverage in that position. Small, careful movements, using the washer to prise up the nails millimetre by millimetre. One board only. Just to see, just for a change, please. Sebastian understood. It took days, weeks; it didn’t matter how long it took.

He’d long ago surmised from the lack of traffic noise that they must be quite high up. There would be a view, he supposed. Miles. His hands were shaking with anticipation as he pulled the first corner back. Just to look. It would be—

— a flood of static in his brain, just grey noise; sharp pain under his nails (he’d torn them, torn his skin), splinters from clutching at the wood. He couldn’t care, scarcely noticed.

Not a view. Not _out_ at all, just the impossibility of another wall, a bank of lights. Fake, all this time, those cycles of sunrise-sunset by which he’d marked his days, or what there had been of them whole enough to count. It was dizzying, impossible, he couldn’t get enough air, couldn’t breathe at all, couldn’t see for the sparks before his eyes.

He stepped off the chair onto a floor he couldn’t feel, let his back slide down against the wall, let his head fall forward into his hands. Dug his fingers in and tugged at his hair until he imagined blood would run from his scalp.

When he finally looked up he wasn’t at all surprised to see Jim, slouching against the opposite wall with his hands In his pockets. A long, quiet moment stretched between them, the attenuation of space, and time, and silence.

Sherlock broke it, finally, as he had broken everything: “Just what is it,” and there was no breath in his lungs to back the words; they tore across his teeth, spilled out ragged into the air, “that you want from me.”

“From you, for you, you never did understand the difference.” Jim’s smile was the brightest thing in the room, the brightest thing in Sherlock’s world. “ _Everything_ , my dear _._ I want to help you. I want you to understand who you really are.” Jim pushed himself off the wall, gave Sherlock a small, secret smile. “There’s something you need to see.”


	7. Chapter 7

Sherlock was having rather a difficult time processing what he was seeing, lining the images up with Jim’s words: injuries he couldn’t remember, drugs in his food—“Scopolamine,” Jim supplied with a grimace, “and a few others you’d probably like a good deal less”—and there was his own unconscious body (Sherlock’s eyes skipping away from those images), there was Sebastian—

Something dark and secret inside Sherlock’s mind cracked wide, that meticulously-constructed oubliette of things he’d been very careful not to know. It was all so clear now. _Obvious_. All this time, and he’d trusted; but he’d been a fool, and would be so no longer. When he turned to Jim and said _thank you_ it was backed by the cumulative force of unknown months of anger and pain. With, that was, his entire being.

Jim’s eyes were bright and impossibly still, for once, locked on Sherlock’s own. “I can help you, my dear,” he said, and a surge of gratitude rose in Sherlock’s chest at the words. “I can help you reclaim what’s yours. If that’s your choice.”

The answer was obvious, but he gave it anyway: “Show me what to do.”

* * *

In the end, the act itself was simple enough: just the easy slide in of the knife at the base of Sebastian’s skull—the hot slick of his blood sliding out to coat Sherlock’s hand, splashing down his bare shin—and it was done.

Sebastian hadn’t taken it quietly, of course. He’d looked at Sherlock with pleading eyes, shaped the words with lips and tongue— _please,_ leannán, _you don’t have to_ —but Sherlock understood the logic now, the inexorability of it, and wouldn’t be dissuaded. When Jim had handed him the knife, wrapped his fingers around the handle (warm fingers over Sherlock’s cool ones, pressure of skin on skin) and said, “You can do this,” as though speaking to a child, Sherlock had accepted it and known it to be truth. He could, he did, _yes_ , and afterward he’d handed the knife back to Jim without a second thought, his path still reassuringly certain.

Jim didn’t like to get his hands dirty so it was up to Sherlock to chip away at the rough edge of the concrete floor where it didn’t quite meet the wall, up to him to dig down into the dirt while Sebastian’s blood seeped into the floor in the middle of the room. It took a long time, and when Sherlock’s hands began to blister and bleed Jim bandaged them carefully, almost reverently, and told him how well he’d done. Sherlock believed him, because Jim had shown him the truth about Sebastian ( _wrong_ : the sense memory of Sebastian’s hand in his hair, voice in his ear), revealed the secrets written in the flesh of his own body. Sherlock could read them now, couldn’t stop himself, now that the language of scars on his skin had been unlocked.

“Oh, you _are_ clever, my dear,” Jim said, when all that was left of Sebastian was a smooth patch of dirt in the corner and the dark stain on the floor. “We are going to have such _fun_ , you and I, when you're feeling a bit more like _yourself._ "

When he began to laugh Sherlock found himself laughing, too, an outpouring of unformed sound from his chest that tore at his throat, forced tears from his eyes that continued long after the laughter itself had stopped and Jim had departed, sliding the deadbolts into place behind him.

In the still silence that followed (Sherlock’s chest still occasionally quivering with what he told himself, firmly, was repressed laughter) he sank onto the bed in exhausted relief, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his head fall forward. Thought: _Now it’s done_ ; and: _it will get better now_ , and it took him a long time to realise that it (whatever _it_ was) simply hadn’t.

He found he couldn’t quite conceptualise what _better_ meant, in any case (the question itself opening up a rift in his mind which he skirted carefully with his thoughts), so perhaps it was just as well.

Sherlock waited.

He’d become quite good at waiting, and it wasn’t until the second cycle of sunrise-sunset (the false lights still running, mocking him, measuring out his false days) that he realised that what he was waiting for was Sebastian; Sebastian, whose body was currently folded inside a small hole under a smooth patch of dirt, whose blood still stained the soles of Sherlock’s bare feet. Sebastian’s world had gone still and quiet, too—dirt packed against his closed eyelids, in his ears, under his nails (the same dirt under Sherlock’s own)—and he wasn’t coming.

Sebastian didn’t know about waiting, and quiet, so Sherlock began to speak. He spoke to Sebastian as Sebastian had spoken to him: small, insubstantial words, just noises strung together. Sherlock didn’t tell him it would be all right (it wouldn’t) and he didn’t tell him he was sorry (didn’t know whether he was, quite) but there didn’t seem to be much point in holding back anything else, not now, and when the small words turned to shouting Sherlock let himself do that, too. Later, when all that remained of his voice was a toneless whisper he sat atop the dirt (knees drawn up, thighs flush against his ribcage) so that Sebastian could still hear him, so he wouldn’t have to be alone in the dark.

The lights cycled on, off, on again, and no one was coming.

He’d made a critical error. He supposed he didn’t mind, so much, in the end. There was always something.

Sherlock dug his fingertips down into the dirt, his toes, just burrowing in; the whisper faded, too, and he held onto the earth and closed his eyes. Then it was just stillness and quiet, the small movements of his lips, and he could hear Sebastian’s voice floating up to him from the dark; Sebastian’s voice _was_ the dark, and Sherlock sank into it with something like relief.

* * *

There was nothing familiar about his surroundings when he opened his eyes: unfamiliar scents in the air, a ceiling he didn’t recognise. There was even something off about the placement of his long limbs on the dark sheets. He ached, astoundingly, all over, and when he tried to examine his memory for a possible cause he found the space there oddly blank. When he rolled to press himself to a seated position, there was a man standing not two feet from his bed, looking out the window.

“Good morning, Sebastian,” the man said, turning, his eyes wide and dark and intent on his face. “Feeling any better? A bit more like _yourself_ this morning?”

A brief moment of disorientation: _Sebastian_ , and an image in his mind of a small patch of dirt, replaced almost immediately by a remembered photograph of a headstone bearing another name entirely.

Just a flash, a slip of memory he couldn’t _quite_ —

A hand on his shoulder broke his train of thought. He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and shifted his shoulders, feeling the minute popping of the bones in his neck, and the other man’s name slotted into place in his mind. “Much better, Jim,” he said, “thank you,” and Jim’s smile cracked wide open.

And he was, he thought; he really _was_ , and if there was some part of his brain that whispered _wrong_ he didn’t hear it.


	8. Epilogue

THE PERSONAL BLOG OF DR. JOHN H. WATSON (PRIVATE)

 **Out with a bang.** \- 17th JUNE - 2:21 p.m.

I suppose that isn’t very funny.

Well. He wasn’t the first of my friends to go that way. I’ve never got used to seeing empty coffins put in the ground. You'd think it would be better. It really isn't, though.

Ella thought it would help to start this up again.

It's been quiet, since. I wish I had something to report, but no news of Moriarty or Moran.

Just in case, though. I won't give them the satisfaction. So I've moved it. And password-protected it, for what that's worth (funny to think passwords might actually mean something again).

I don't know why I'm bothering to write this as, if you're reading it, you already know. But I promised I'd write something.

There it is, then.

* * *

 **The flat is still a mess.** \- 21st JUNE - 8:03 p.m.

I’d just set a match to it, if I weren’t sure the resulting chemical cloud would wipe out two-thirds of NW1.

 **Maybe I’ll do it anyway.** \- 21st JUNE - 10:52 p.m.

* * *

 **It was a joke, Harry.** \- 22nd JUNE - 12:04 a.m.

I wouldn’t do that to Mrs. Hudson.

And stop calling when you’ve been drinking. I’ll just hang up on you again.

 **I’m serious, Harry** \- 22nd JUNE - 12:38 a.m.

Turning the ringer off on my mobile now.

* * *

 **Something actually happened to me.** \- 14th JULY - 10:13 a.m.

I got sacked.

Three days ago now, I suppose it was. This bloody hangover.

Can’t say I blame Sarah. I stopped going in weeks ago.

 ~~What good is a doctor who can’t even~~

* * *

 **Better than nothing** \- 1st OCTOBER - 8:11 p.m.

I was finally able to do some cleaning.

Well. Not cleaning, but I moved the skull. It’s stupid, I know, but it felt too much like he was looking at me.

 ~~That’s morbid.~~

 ~~And idiotic. I’ll probably delete this in the morning.~~

* * *

 **Thank you, Mycroft** \- 29th JANUARY - 11:38 a.m.

(Yes, I know you’re reading this. I won’t bother changing the password.)

I went to tell Mrs. Hudson I wouldn’t be renewing the lease, and it seems the flat has been paid up. I assume that’s your hand in.

I’ll repay you when I’ve got more than just my pension coming in.

* * *

 **no subject** \- 4th MAY - 11:41 p.m.

Thanks for the pint, Greg. It was good to see you.

Hard to believe it’s been a year.

 **no subject** \- 4th MAY - 11:44 p.m.

Hard to believe it’s ONLY been a year.

* * *

 **No subject.** \- 6th JANUARY - 1:38 p.m.

I really need to get this place cleaned up.

 ~~It looks like a bomb went off in here.~~

* * *

 **Thanks again, Mycroft.** \- 27th JANUARY - 8:01 a.m.

You don’t have to keep doing this. I've already decided I need to leave London. I appreciate the thought, but I have a position lined up at a small surgery in Cornwall, and I think a change of scene might do me some good.

Yes, I DID notice the phones ringing all the way to the shops.

 **Not a joke.** \- 27th JANUARY - 10:48 a.m.

I meant what I said, Mycroft. I'm going.

Though I do appreciate the offer to keep the flat available, I don't see why it's so important to you. Still, it'll be a nice break for Mrs. Hudson, rent with no tenants to clean up after. Goodness knows she's earned it, after what we put her through.

Now stop doing that with the cameras, you creepy bastard.

* * *

 **There we go.** \- 2nd February - 2:01 a.m.

There we are, then. That's the lot. Everything of his boxed in his room. Mine's ready to go in the moving van tomorrow.

The flat feels so bloody empty. Because it IS. It shouldn't keep catching me by surprise.

* * *

 **Two years** \- 4th MAY - 1:17 a.m.

The new job is going well. It's quiet. Quiet is good sometimes.

Sometimes.

 **This is pointless** \- 13th FEBRUARY - 11:41 p.m.

I forgot this even existed, that's how little I've had to say. It's too bloody quiet around here.

I’m through.

Sorry, Ella, if you're still reading. I tried.

 **DAMMIT, HARRY** \- 13th FEBRUARY - 11:59 p.m.

No, I'm not about to "do something stupid." Just shutting down the blog. Bloody hell.

Everything.

Is.

Fine.

Really. I'm fine. Fine, and turning off my mobile for the night.

* * *

It was just past 2 p.m. on the afternoon of 30th March when Lestrade’s number appeared on John’s mobile screen.

Lestrade didn’t even return John’s greeting. “I have news. Do you have time to hear it?”

John peeked out toward the surgery’s waiting room. “If this is about what I _think_ it’s about, Inspector,” he said, “I’ll make time.”

He listened to Lestrade take a long breath on the other end of the line. “Moriarty’s resurfaced. Moran, too. In Switzerland, of all places.”

John huffed a laugh down his nose. “Switzerland?”

“Yeah. We got the report two days ago, and were just able to confirm it this morning. They’ve been linked directly to a string of petty crime—just small-time stuff, really—and there are hints that they might have been involved in larger-scale activities within the last few months. We’re still investigating, but I thought you might. Ah. I knew you’d want to know.”

“Yes,” John said. “Thank you.”

Even after three years, the mention of those names sent a hot spike of rage up the back of neck. He glanced, from old habit, at his hand. It was steady.

“We’re way outside our jurisdiction on this, of course,” Lestrade continued, “so it’ll take some time before we can do anything concrete, but… what are you doing this weekend? Fancy a trip to London?”

John smiled into the phone. “If there’s anything I can do to help, you won’t be able to stop me.”

When he spoke, John could hear the answering smile in Greg’s voice. “Good. It’ll be nice to have you around again. We’ve…. well. It’ll be good to see you again, mate.”

When John pressed the button to disconnect the call, he slipped his mobile into his pocket. It weight was reassuring, and he found himself reaching for it again and again during the rest of his afternoon appointments, just tapping his fingers to it. A reminder. A lifeline.

It wouldn’t be the same, of course, he knew it wouldn’t. But the promise of the game again, of _closure_ , after so long.

He had, after all, missed it.

At half five John bid farewell to his last patient of the day, packed up his things, and set out for home.

He didn’t get there.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The True Faith](https://archiveofourown.org/works/378165) by [Lindentreeisle (Captainblue)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captainblue/pseuds/Lindentreeisle)




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